how to swap VM disks in azure?

Question

I've have recreated a virtual machine in azure, when I did it azure assigned an OS disk to the VM which is normal and obvious, and I have a disk from my previous virtual machine.

for now I got two disks in the panel: - OS disk - Data Disk

azure disks

what I want is to delete the "current OS disk" and Set data disk as OS disk is that possible?

I can turn the vm off, no problem, beside of it what else do I need to do? — pedrommuller, Dec 06 '14 at 22:17

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 07 '14 at 12:28

You can't swap the disks in a VM, but you can register the data disk as an OS disk and build a new VM while using the newly registered disk.

What you need to do is:

Delete the VM while keeping the disks.
(Optional) Create a backup copy of the data disk, use the PowerShell command Start-AzureStorageBlobCopy, more information here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2014/01/24/create-backups-of-virtual-machines-in-windows-azure-by-using-powershell.aspx.
Convert the data disk to an OS disk, use the PowerShell command Add-AzureDisk -DiskName "MyLinuxDisk" -MediaLocation "http://yourstorageaccount.blob.core.azure.com/vhds/linuxsys.vhd" -OS "Linux", more information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn495252.aspx
Create a new custom VM, where you will use the newly added OS disk, you will find it under the "My Images" section in the Azure portal.

Hope this helps.

Cool! Thanks for the guidance I'm new to the azure world! – pedrommuller Dec 07 '14 at 15:18 — pedrommuller, Dec 07 '14 at 15:18

how to swap VM disks in azure?

1 Answers1